The notion of a Planhas been tossed around in Quebec. Since 1961, in one form or another, the elaboration of a development plan remained an objective for successive governments, except for the last which finally abandoned the idea. One can just as well understand the initial infatuation with planning as the disenchantment which followed.

The desire to coordinate economic objectives and instruments of action was, at the beginning of the “quiet revolution”, all the more acute as Quebec had traversed the recession of 1957 to 1961 with difficulty. Unemployment, during one winter, had exceeded 14%. One began to understand certain signs of ageing which have become quite obvious since. Finally, one was impressed bythe results of planningin certain countries of Europe.

The first body tasked with preparing a planfor Quebec was the Conseil d’Orientation Economique*. It was asked to develop a plan for Eastern Quebec, and then to broach a general regional development program.

The Quebec Office of Planning and Developmentreplaced theEconomic Orientation Council, in theory with the same functions, but very quickly found itself tasked with studies that were interdepartmental in character, often having no connection, one to the other.

Gradually, as the paper piled up, the very concept of planning grew blurred and vanished. And, finally, with the current government, one was back to the usual idea that, ordinary public investment and the major hydroelectric works aside,

By proposing thatthe reorganization and revivalof the Quebec economybe undertaken in the framework of a Plan, we are thus conscious of having a steep hill to climb in the opinion of many people for whom the case is closed.

The fundamental characteristic of a Planis that all the principal agentsof a nation’s economyagree periodicallyto confront their objectives, their projects or their proposals, then to render them compatible and to arrange their operations in consequence.

Among all agents of the economy which take part in a Plan, two are of exceptional importance: the State, because the equivalent of more than a third of the national product passes through its hands, and the companies because it is they which raise the major share of investments.

It took a number of years, in Quebec, to realize that with a Government cut in two, and the halves opposed, the public sector would never be able to correctly fulfill its role within a Plan. The examples are as numerous as they are aberrant. Thus the regional policy of the provincial government, as stated in 1966, envisaged concentrating investments in the regional capitals; counter to this, the policy of the federal government, begun at the same time and considerably broadened since, envisaged scattering over vast territories. The Québecois government wanted above all to subsidize new types of industries,
modern technological sectors still insufficiently developed. As for the federal level, it made a point of making its assistance available to practically any kind of manufacturing company, provided that it created jobs.

For businesses, especially the large multinational corporations, the idea of a Québécois Plan was far-fetched. Why, they wondered, should we detach from our other Canadian factories those which are in Quebec, to constrain them to a particular course of action

and coordination unnecessary either in Ontario or the West, or in the Maritimes. If there is to be coordination, it will be done across all our Canadian factories, and then between them and the rest of our activities in the world. We acknowledge that the provincial government had no means, legal or otherwise, to bring them into line. The federal government has the means, but did not see why it should force companies to adopt two behaviors: one for Quebec and another for the rest of Canada.

What is revealed by this experiment of the Sixties, is that without the necessary instruments, a Plan will never be anything but a more or less inadequate study, presented more or less well, but rigorously platonic. The missing instruments are precisely those which result from sovereignty. As long as Quebec is not independent, as long as it does not possess all the fiscal, legislative and mobilizing powers of a Sovereign state, to wave the banner of planning is at best the expression of a great lack of guile, or at worst, a fairly cheap way to neutralize a growing desire for participation.

In this respect, the current government has at least had the merit of frankness. Knowing that it does not have the means for a Plan, it returns to the traditional forms of collusion between a truncated State and the all-powerful multinational corporations. It is perhaps not too brilliant, nor surely very effective, but it is the best one can do when one does not have the means of one’s ambitions.

It remains that we have no right to be satisfied with such a state of affairs. Quebec’s economy will never be rebuilt by coupling the inclinations of an impotent government, the external interests of multinational corporations, and federal social aid for poor regions.

An overall Plan is the product of a dialog between intentions and schemes, ensuing from negotiations between groups and from arbitrations by the government. It is also the central instrument for allocation of resources.

It is for example at this point that the eternal periodic debate should be settled between those who prefer to accentuate social development and those who give higher priority to economic development. It is also within the framework of the Plan that the general rules are worked out for the division of fiscal resources between pay raises for public sector workers, and the expansion or launching of new programs of expenditure.

It is the preparation of the Plan which reveals economic development priorities. At this time it is decided whether, during a specified number of years, one will deal more with the raising up of such and such a sector, or whether labor displacements will occur in sectors being phased out in deference to others being prepared and their expansion financed.

Likewise, it is always within the framework of the Plan that general objectives acquire their regional dimension. It is there that the decision is made to further advance the industrialization of the Montreal metropolitan region, or the very contrary, to initiate decentralization of industry according to certain privileged geographical axes.

If the government and the Parliament necessarily reserve the basic right to decide, this must come only after a meticulous and systematic general confrontation of viewpoints and interests. Ideally, the majority of decisions are made and priorities set without the government’s having to resort to its right of arbitration. But one should not fall into other-worldliness; the Plan is long and difficult to work out, and it is rare that it is achieved without confrontations. Which underscores that a society and its economy are terribly complex organisms.

On condition, of course, that the allocation of savings and financial resources accurately reflects the choices and orientations envisaged by the Plan. We have already proposed a strongly accentuated participation of Government

and of community agencies in the control of financial institutions. One will understand now why their action must tightly match the perspectives of the Plan. A decline in savings should never block this overall scheme nor undermine its execution. The objectives having certainly to be compatible with the capacity of the country and most particularly with its savings, the assignment of these resources must respond quite precisely to the social and economic choices which governed the development of the Plan.

That being said, we have no intention of planning the economy of an independent Quebec in advance. That would be a a little bit premature. We are content to emphasize a number of priorities of an economic nature which must, in our view, be included in the first Plan.

In most fields, this economy is obsolete. Efforts to revive it, to give it a certain new vigour, were not supported or remained at the stage of pilot experiments. For every businessman who wants to live in his era, there are five for whom the company is only a means of making money in the short term, while waiting for that American offer to arrive that will guarantee a gilded retirement down South.

The situation is no better at the level of big business. Three Rivers, a city long heralded as the world capital of newsprint production, is today witnessing the closure of paper plants built 45 years ago and never updated! As for Montreal, it ranks horrendously behind most of its North-American counterparts in the elimination of slums inherited from before the First World War.

By various protectionist measures, one can obviously obstruct these imports. One can even, by continual innovation of procedures or products, ensure the future of some of these fields of activity. But elsewhere, the threat of imports is continual and, inevitably, Quebec’s low wages reflect the highly fragile character of these industries. It should thus be provided that in certain branches of the textile, clothing and even the shoe manufacturing industries, a gradual and orderly rationalization should take place which will shift some of that work force into other sectors where the chances of growth are better as new jobs are created there.

Indeed, for a whole range of products, the industrial structure of Quebec remains undeveloped: in mechanical engineering, machinery, industries linked to technological research still have much road to pave. In other cases, certain basic steps have yet to be taken. Consider that the time will come when our delays will condemn us to invest hundreds of millions in dealing with water pollution, but the manufacture of the necessary instruments has barely been begun. And the Premier of Quebec wants to stave off the advent of nuclear energy, citing, for example, the fact that the equipment would have to be imported. Think that, to take a less spectacular example, we consume 45% of all gramophone records on the Canadian market and that, per capita, Quebecers are the greatest purchasers of records in the western world – but there is not even one record manufacturer in Quebec!

If various modern companies were established in Quebec in aeronautics, electric, electronic or chemical products, it is still more essential that we have a suitable share of the multitude of small and large industries necessitated by these high technology sectors.

Thus, at the same time that emphasis would be placed on shifting resources toward these branches of high productivity, it would be necessary to also consider the accelerated modernization of certain traditional activities which would be their only chance to remain or become com-

In this resurgenceof the manufacturing industry, Government will play a major role. It is not only a question of recurring to the role we have sketched out for the S.R.I., but also of systematically using public-sector purchasing power, which Hydro-Quebec alone was able to employ for industrialization.

Thus, it is remarkable that up to last year, there was no major manufacturer of transformers and reactances in Quebec. All was imported. If there is now, it is due primarily to the purchasing policies of Hydro-Quebec. One could say as much concerning the manufacture of insulators, or the considerable expansion in the construction of mobile homes, or of the electric cable industry, etc.

It would be inconceivable that a programme of water treatment, estimated at nearly a billion dollars over ten years, would not be accompanied by requirements similar to those for the manufacture of equipment. And if in the same period we must engage in a program of nuclear plants for a few billion dollars, Government would have the duty to ensure that a solid tool industry appears in Quebec to provision this construction.

Public sector “purchase at home” policies are in fact, in all industrialized countries, among the most powerful levers of development. The Quebec Government, the school commissions and the hospitals each year devote several tens of millions of dollars to purchases of electronics components alone. These orders currently are scattered among a legion of canvassers most of whom work for outside firms. Even for their purchases of supplies and construction materials, the hospitals, the schools and municipalities are still far from being systematically directed towards Quebec industry. The Americans or the Ontarians, however, believe themselves not

not rich enough to give up this kind of purchasing policy! Dominated by considerations of electoral finances and emoluments to canvassers specialized in political relations, the provincial government is hardly conscious of this role which the public sector could play as an industrial lever. So much so that, for years, the standards of its Procurement Service for automobiles were written so as to exclude cars produced by Soma, of which the government was the principal shareholder!

If the purchasing power of a government is a powerful lever of industrialization, then what can be said of that of consumers? However, in Canada today, this purchasing power is exerted by means of channels of distribution which are often controlled by foreign interests, and could become moreso if one takes no safeguards in the Quebec of tomorrow (where the interests of Ontarians will become foreign).

The integration of factories and distribution channels is thus a downright primary objective. It is still hard to understand that often, to enter a manufacturing sector, it is better to begin by purchasing the distribution, and then to approach the manufacturing issue. In other words, acquire the outlet before engaging in the production. This is moreover quite as true for the agricultural sector as for the manufacturing sector.

For this reason, immediately after secondary industry, we make a point of insisting on housing construction. In any modern economy, housing involves investments as important as those in industry. And these investments are reflected by at least an equivalent impact on public services.

Lastly, if one takes account of the fact that 20% of the family budget is devoted to housing, the development of this sector thus appears, from the economic as much as from the social point of view, to be a crucial lever of development.

Urban renovation, decongestion, elimination of slums, the revitalizing of rural habitat, the increased need for second homes: so many reasons to quickly raise the housing construction budget by at least a third per year, meaning 300 million dollars more than the current effort. With a corresponding domino effect in public services.

But still, the demand for housing must be demonstrated. It is perfectly useless to offer to the tenant of a $50-a-month slum, new housing at $140. It is not on account of his taste that he lives in a slum. The social objectives evoked in a preceding chapter obviously must be concretized in parallel to the economic action we are talking about here.

In this context, the Société d’Habitation du Québec*, replacing the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, will find itself entrusted with an unprecedented role. It will be tasked at one and the same time to guarantee a major share of mortgage financing; to advance sums necessary for the construction of housingwhose rental will no longer be related to the cost of construction, land or money; to represent the government in the preparation of major construction projects; and to push research much further than has been done up to now on methods and construction materials.

The financing of the Société d’Habitation du Québec will be done on the same basis as that of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Independence will make it possible to place at the disposal of the S.H.Q. the resources that the federal level currently ensures to the C.M.H.C. or channels in its direction.

In addition, of all the public sectors, electricity currently devours the most resources. To manufacture and transport the current we need, we expend amounts equal to a third of all manufacturing investments.

Electricity is undoubtedly important, but not to the point of draining all the available resources. Especially if one can go about it differently and, at the same time, enter full throttle into the technological revolution of the nuclear age.

Here is the primary reason for our reticence with regard to the project as suggested by the government. After many months, the debates over the James Bay have remained pretty sterile, especially because the technical studies were not sufficiently advanced. But based on the still fragmentary data that we have, it seems obvious to us that there could well be a difference of a few billion between the cost of the northern investment plan envisaged by the government and that of a program combining a serious development of nuclear energy with secondary hydraulics works (i.e. pumping stations for peak electricity).

Let us note moreover that the available data enable us to believe that this cost difference would quite possibly be enough to defray the operations of repatriation of the decision-making centres* which we propose elsewhere, as well as a good part of the housing program which we have just outlined.

One does not play lightly with billions. Beyond the “images” which it perpetualy strives to project, it is in reality our future with which the current government thus engages, while even risking seriously compromising it.

One thing already stands out clearly:that the neglect of the Québécois government and the quite effective action on the other hand of the federal level in protecting the Prairies, outright combine to maintain disorganization in our agriculture, an absence of concrete objectives and a frightening lack of integration with consumer markets.

* Euphemism for removal of powers from the Parliament of Canada, to hand them to Quebec

Needless to add, moreover, that we will never produce all the foodstuffs we consume. Our climate and, secondarily, our soils are the reason. It remains that nothing less than serious investments – rather than scattered subsidies without real effects – are capable of lifting up our agricultural production, provided that we finally treat it as an industry rather than a folk lifestyle. Equipment will be needed, for example refrigerated warehouses.

One must also control the channels of distribution, a number of which, after independence, will be the subsidiaries of foreign companies; in order to widen their market, the cooperatives must have the chance to take control of it. Here, there is as much if not more investment to be made as on the farms, although a serious effort at modernization is also indicated in this area: our greenhouses, for example, remain far behind those of Ontario.

As for the forests, we know that the concessions, consuming the quasi totality of our accessible and profitable forests, are in an old disorder which is a permanent invitation to under-employment and to wasting the foremost of our natural wealth. The result is that the transport of wood is increasingly expensive and that the profitability of the sawmills and the pulp and paper factories, which have moreover been allowed to become scandalously outmoded in a host of cases, has undergone a reduction the disastrous effects of which have multiplied throughout the industry over the past two years.

It is necessary that the community urgently abolish the whole regime of concessions and take in hand the control and administration of its forests. Under the authority of State control, the cut will be leased by it to cooperative or private companies in each region, in order to ensure them of a permanent field of activity and to bring along a substantial reduction in the excessive costs of transport which burden the cost price of wood products.

Spread over ten years, the amounts which the companies will collect in payment of their facilities and forestry equipment will have to be invested in modernization and a clean-up of their industrial operations in order to make them once again competitive on the international markets.

Lastly, the government will invest systematically in works of sylviculture and reforestation in rural regions so that, within ten years, we can have at our disposal a provisioning of wood closer to inhabited centers and factories. These investments will not only make it possible to further reduce the transport costs but will restore to forest areas the dynamism which they have lost.

At first sight, one might believe that the “white paper” tabled in March 1972 by the Minister for Lands and Forests covered the majority of these proposals. That is not the case. If that document suggests the disappearance of the forest concessions, it is only to make them reappear in another form which in fact ensures their survival and makes their exploitation more advantageous for the companies. At bottom, the “white paper” is only a smoke screen. The real transformation of forestry development, vital for rural regions as well as for tens of thousands of factory workers, is still far from being seen as a top priority by the provincial government.

Lastly, while systematically refusing to collaborate in employment projection programmes and, where necessary, relocation of populations, the great mining interests continue to accentuate the economically fragile and socially unhealthy character of this sector.

– but when it is, and singularly in the case of asbestos where we have a prevalent position, to carry the participation of the State to at least the level necessary to accelerate manufacturing operations in Quebec, in accordance with the perspective we outlined in proposing an Investment Code.

There is no longer any dynamic economy, anywhere, which does not rely on this indispensable infrastructure, which is a policy of research planned, financed and coordinated as adequately as possible according to national development priorities.

Encompassing the university sector, that of the large industrial companies and State centers and laboratories, such a research policy must from now on absorb an increasing fraction of the national product and involve itself just as well in the training of scientific personnel as in pure research programs and in technological and industrial “research and development”. Given the increasing interpenetration of all disciplines of knowledge and also the social repercussions of the giddy changes that economic life undergoes, research must also, more and more, intensify and organize on the side of the social sciences.

Amongst the number of countries which succeed and whose success is in large part derived from budgets and research organisms, is found Sweden, whose population and resources are comparable to those of Quebec, but whose level and quality of life dramatically exceed our own.

However, while Ontario received from the C.N.R.* alone $2.90 per head in 1969-70 and while the Canadian average was $2.40, Quebec had to be content with $1.60 (of which an exorbitant share went to the always better “placed” anglophone universities). It should be noted on this subject that after scores of years of talking, the Québécois State does not yet have any serious instrument of scientific policy; it was only at the beginning of ‘72 that it finally obtained… an interdepartemental committee flanked by a quasi-permanent advisory counsel!

If it is added that in the predominant sector of foreign companies and multinationals, practically all the expensive and innovative research is done elsewhere than locally, one can guess the path we have yet to tread…

This State Center, in liaison with the industrial sector and the universities, will draw up a global research plan to which budgets will be affected which will be regarded as absolutely priority investments.

In today’s world, research is not a kind of luxury to which only big countries can treat themselves. It is the very basis of a certain originality in the products we have to offer to the rest of the world. It is not enough to want to sell something other than raw materials; far more is it necessary that these other things not be just slavish copies of goods manufactured in the United States.

It is not all to establish a new allocation of resources among the sectors of activity. It is still necessary to place the results somewhere on the map. Also, the Plan must comprise a true regional dimension.

* CNR – Could this mean “centre national de recherche”, “national research center”?

However, the economy in a number of regions in Quebec is fragile, given that it is based almost solely on the development of exported natural resources, always susceptible to exhaustion or to the discovery of better deposits elsewhere in the world. The mechanization of the work of extraction and the depression of traditional agriculture having caused endemic unemployment, one understands then that shut-downs of paper mills or other wood products factories strike like true catastrophes.

One does nothing but avoid collapse by multiplying measures such as subsidies to any (or nearly any) kind of factory pretty much anywhere on the territory, winter work programs or local initiatives and, naturally, welfare.

One creates district development councils to try to develop integrated programs, but as the Québécois government itself does not know how to do this, it should be no surprise if the majority of the RDC*’shave had an essentially decorative role.

Unless there are major and quite unlikely changes in the concerns of the current regime, it is thus the Parti Québécois which will be the first to face the problem of regional development head-on by ranking it amongst the priorities of the Plan.

After so many years of opposition to progress, even the start of a true beginning is no mean feat We are conscious that to successfully carry it off, we will need all the research resources and the complete records which only a government has.

With more than 40% of the population and 60% of the value of manufacturing output, the Metropolitan Zone will be a species of monster in an independent Quebec. Few countries ever concentrated such an enormous proportion of their resources in one location.

negligible. It is an asset one will not lightly sabotage. So much the less if Montreal were not to be used as a crucible in the effort of industrial and urban modernization which we envisage, this effort itself would not last long.

The area which is bordered by the airport of Saint Scholastique, Joliette, Sorel, Saint-Jean and Valleyfield, will thus continue to be the heart of the Québécois economy, the privileged site of heavy industry and the mechanical engineering industry, as well as the major service companies.

And it is the region such as it is which must be developed in an overall vision: living areas, industrial parks, green spaces, leisure activities, will have to be arranged there on the regional rather than municipal plan.

From this region, lastly, the powerful domino effects commence which already extend over a vast concentric territory where second homes, leisure organizations, winter and summer tourism, henceforth halt the rural exodus and possibly promise to eventually propel a reverse movement. Everything that is located at less than an hour and a half by car from downtown Montreal is already within the orbit of the metropolis and can only become even more integrated into it in the future. This great belt of the Laurentian Mountains, the two banks of the river up to the borders of Three Rivers, Estrie and zones near Ontario, in fact, the whole of southern Quebec is being transformed by the needs of the Montreal giant for air and space. What is above all necessary to avoid, is that it happens anarchistically.

Of course, one must also prevent this expansion from crushing all the rest and that outside the zone of direct influence of this metropolis, the regional economies still have to scrape out a living or even to collapse.

There are a number of ways of going about it. Up to now, what was wanted above all was to emphasize the decentralization of industry. Certain industries can lend themselves to such a policy without too many disadvantages and without its costing too dearly in subsidies, in particular when their transport costs are rather low. But that is a highly selective process, whose result can be extremely disappointing for the population given the rate at which automation has reduced hiring in the new factories.

It is rather doubtful, consequently, that decentralization of industry can alone constitute a sufficient lever. It will require something more. The most likely motor, in our view, is that which can provide the new regional and municipal administration structures that we described above.

As we indicated, there is no valid reason to keep the day-to-day administration of health services, education, social welfare, justice, the roadway system (other than highways and national main roads), etc., in Quebec [City]. In the majority of cases, these functions would be better filled and at the same time closer to the citizens if they belonged to the broadened municipalitieswhose creation we propose.

Equipped by the State with resources corresponding to the breadth of their new tasks, with budgets and services far more considerable than today, these municipalities would become amongst the largest employers.(1)

For its part, the State would instal in the regional “capitals” all of its services of coordination, monitoring and control, keeping in Quebec [City] the development of programs, standards and bylaws, and political administration.

It is therefore not a question – not in the least! – of recreating the federal regime in Quebec! But it is necessary to cease obstructing the governmental machine of administrative operations which asphyxiates it. And straight away to ensure

to the regional “capitals” and tothe key cities among the new municipalities a major role in the field of administration, which today is synonymous with an economic role. As soon as one speaks of regional economic revitalization, one must indeed recall that in our era, one worker in five earns his living in the public sector.

In terms of employment, such an administrative reform goes much further, and much more cheaply, than any policy of decentralization of industry, even if it is understood that it is necessary to endeavor to carry it out.

Not at all. Quebec, the National Capital, will immediately have to recuperate and rationally integrate the host of ministries, services and commissions which currently belong to Ottawa. Undoubtedly this integration of a multitude of functions too often dislocated or duplicated for a century, will allow it noticeable savings compared to the present federal-provincial red tape. But one must nonetheless envisage the creation of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a central Postal administration, a television and radio commission, a national ports commission, to mention only a few random examples… Not counting the opening of a good number of embassies and delegations.

Quebec should not however be confined exclusively in its governmental role. One project in particular, which is making gradual headway, would aim at concentrating in the capital a substantial research sector able to be used as a pivot for those advanced technology industries one invariably finds in the extension of the scientific centers. It was thus that Boston was able to secure a true renaissance.

the constant increase in the size of ships, in any event will tend to accelerate this essential aspect of the economic development of the city. Especially if one takes account of the coastal traffic, whose exclusivity it would be inconceivable not to reserve for ourselves all along our coasts and for which the port of the capital is the central focus of attention.

Another port which could and must see phenomenal expansion is that of Sept-lles. In the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, it is the only one accessible to the oceangoing giants of 300,000 to 500,000 tons without prohibitive dredging.

To experience the spectacular future which as a matter of course would await it at the crossroads to the great international movements of corn, iron ore and oil, the port of Sept-lles has but to hope for a government which deigns to pay attention to it and whose sole concern is Québécois.

Before plunging into the rural sector, a few remarks on the “case” of Hull. At present, Ottawa is endeavoring to integrate the city into its capital region. Independence will inevitably abolish a host of jobs held in the federal services by residents of Hull. While the operation can proceed by stages and in as civilized a fashion as possible, it is not inescapable.

To clarify the picture, let us underline first that any federal civil servant who is a Québécois citizen and expresses the desire, will be repatriated without delay into the public service of Quebec. Obviously, the majority will then have to move to Montreal or to the capital. Administrative decentralization will however make it possible to leave a good number on the spot, particularly those among the least specialized.

What’s more, our program already indicates that Hull seems to us the most suitable headquarters for those Québécois entities which will be in charge of our day-to-day “presence” in the customs unionand other eventual accords with Canada.

The balanced development of the area will require as well the establishment of sundry industrial activities. The opening of a communications materials plant currently offers overall prospects which must be widened as soon as this kind of decision is finally ours to make.

In the first case, we saw that the domino effect from the metropolis can only continue to be accentuated. It is no longer really a question of wondering whether, but how, this zone/sphere will develop.

Everywhere else, on the other hand, one must note that growth is dangerously mortgaged. Of course, certain areas have an obvious tourist vocation, but this will not be achieved in fact until one decides at last to finance it and to exploit it correctly. In this respect, tourism development efforts in the Gaspé up to now have hardly provided more than pretty poor and sometimes even ridiculous examples.

We must realize that tourism today is a gigantic industry. In Canada’s balance of payments, it represents receipts definitely much higher than total exports of newsprint. Such a sector deserves quite other than crumbs.

Nevertheless, beyond the great Montreal zone, these principally tourism dedicated areas are not very extensive. There are a few others, rather restricted as well, where invigorated agriculture, and livestock even more, can impart new profitability. But for the major part of our rural territories, the economic future resides in a return to the forests.

This is why we cannot be too supportive of projects advanced with a view to gradually concentrating all the principal forestry developments within a radius of a score of miles from populated centers, proportionately as reforestation and sylviculture are increased.

During an initial phase, 50 to 75 million dollars per annum of public investments must be envisaged for the regrouping of lands and the organization of collective or cooperative units of exploitation. No better investment could be imagined. The reduction in the costs of wood and transport, followed by a progressive revalorization of the forests, will not only make it possible to improve the output of existing industry and then to increase the number and capacity of factories, but also to situate these for once in an intelligent manner. At the same time, entire regions will be able to be pulled out of the welfare economy into which they have been sunk.

It should be said in passing that it is also necessary to benefit from this refitting to finally settle the question of access to the forest for fishing, hunting and outdoor activities. What is required, as is already known, is to combine this accessibility with a serious protection of fauna. It is a dilemma which others throughout the world have faced with more ingenuity than by reserving their rivers and their hunting grounds to company presidents and their courtesans…

There is no question of eliminateing jobs without knowing in advance where people will resituate themselves. Even less should rural zones be emptied by dispatching their inhabitants to urban ghettos, thus necessarily signing them up to social welfare.

From this point of view, the route to be followed is already clearly indicated by other small countries such as Sweden, Holland or Switzerland. It is necessary, sector by sector and area by area, to directly link the disappearance of jobs with the recycling and opening up of new fields, so that the modernization of our economy is carried out in good order.

Whether these be transfers of personnel between head offices in Montreal, or displacement of jobs from the clothing industry to electronics, or the folding of ruralhamlets with relocalization to forest villages, or again

Even recognizing the extent to which it is difficult, one must also manage to marry the vocational guidance of students with the evolution of the job market. Obviously, we know very well that this poses problems of “divination” which are still far from being solved. All the more reason to start as soon as possible to work on it.

An enlightened and humane policy is at present unrealizable in the area of labor and manpower, condemned to be divided as it is between two levels of government.* In a sovereign Quebec, it will constitute one of the principal bases of the Plan. For, if the growth and development of an economy have great technical requirements, it is in the manner of preventing misdoings and of inserting people into these complex wheels that one may judge the quality of a society.

* Allusion to the federal-provincial structure of Canada, i.e., the division of powers between Parliament and the provincial Legislatures.

122

122

– 30 –

PERMISSION:Nota bene: This French transcript and the exclusive English translation are by Kathleen Moore for the legal research purposes of Habeas Corpus Canada, The Official Legal Challenge to North American Union. Document date: 7 January 2015, based on the document of 28 May 2014. Permission is given to use this document, with credit to its origin. If you find this document useful or interesting, please support The Official Legal Challenge To North American Union: PayPal: habeas.corpus.canada@live.com

UPDATE: FREE DOWNLOAD now available for researchers:

The 7zip folder contains: (1) the AUDIO TAPE of the French CBC radio show discussing the Manifesto; (2) The Table of Contents of the Manifesto (Translated); (3) an 18-MB PDF file of the manifesto (scanned at the law library of the French University of Montreal; (4) an OCR of the manifesto.

Robert Rumilly:
Two important authors on the communist infiltration of Canada are Alan Stang and Robert Rumilly. Please read my exclusive English translation of two chapters from Rumilly's 1956 book The Leftist Infiltration in French Canada (L'Infiltration gauchiste au Canada français).

ANTICOMMUNIST ARCHIVE & STORIES:

EXCLUSIVE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
of the 1972 manifesto of the Parti Québécois, calling for a Communist State of Quebec
Segments translated so far:

UPDATE 15 August 2016: 100% complete! First English translation of 1972 PQ manifesto for a Communist State of Quebec. This is what we were really "voting" for in 1980 and 1995. There is more text in the PDF download than is posted online in html: https://www.sendspace.com/file/pgg7mg

Communist Straight Jacket Over Canada: Quand nous serons vraiment chez nous: 1972 manifesto of the Parti Québécois for a Communist state of Quebec